How Not To Hit On People

Trigger warning for brief discussion of boundary violations. Moderation warning: I do NOT want to talk about Elevatorgate again. Skeptics and the gendersphere have rehashed every conceivable aspect of Elevatorgate approximately eleventy kajillion times. Every conceivable point that could possibly be made about Elevatorgate has been already made. If you bring up Elevatorgate, I WILL delete your comment.

Recently there has been a bit of a kerfluffle among atheist blogs around the issue of atheist men hitting on/sexually harassing/making uncomfortable/groping women at atheist conferences. JT Eberhard did a post asking for input about how to hit on ladies, as a socially awkward heterosexual man, without making them uncomfortable or sexually harassing them. And now I have thoughts which are far too long for a comment!

Now, while at atheist conferences apparently the problem is mostly socially awkward men hitting on women who don’t want to be hit on, in the real world it’s far less so. The expectation is still that men initiate and women wait. However, there are a fuckton of socially awkward women, women who initiate, men who don’t initiate– not to mention the queers whom this heteronormative idea completely erases. I personally am female-bodied and mostly sleep with straight men, and yet if I didn’t make the first move I’d never get laid; at the same time, I don’t have this mysterious “ability to read signals” so many people apparently have.

Unfortunately, a lot of advice really isn’t helpful to me. Like that body language stuff! How do I tell if she has her arms crossed because she’s cold or because she wants to get away? He’s turning her feet in the opposite direction– fuck, I can’t remember, is that interested or not interested? Is this too close, am I invading their personal space? And how am I supposed to keep track of the conversation AND all this shit at once? So I’ve decided to prepare a list of things one can do to mostly avoid violating boundaries or making people uncomfortable. (Note for the neuroatypicals: I love you guys, but I am not any manner of licensed psychologist. If you have a brain reason why you can’t figure out social interaction, I’m not sure how much help I can be. This is merely for the awkward, not the autistic!)

1) Be a genuinely kind, non-entitled person. This is my biggest piece of advice, and it ought to be really reassuring to a lot of awkward people. If you genuinely are kind and mean well and are interested in other people, most people can tell. All the body-language shit? Assuming you’re neurotypical, your body will probably handle it for you. You don’t have to learn how to impersonate a kind person (although of course it is possible to do so, as many people have learned to their displeasure), you can just… be a kind person. This is totally my secret for dating people as a socially awkward person!

Unfortunately, we all have a lot of cultural detritus floating around our brains. Like “I want to date this person, if they don’t want to date me they’re an asshole.” Or “if I am awesome enough/fulfill my gender role well enough/find the magic trick to getting laid, I will earn the right to date this person.” Or anything involving the word “friend-zone.” That’s not your fault! Everyone has shit messages like that. Nevertheless, the healthy attitude to take to flirting with people of the appropriate gender is “That person seems cool. It’d be awesome if we dated, but it’s also cool if we’re friends, since they’re an awesome person I’d like to hang out with either way. And, hey, there’s probably another awesome person I can date somewhere else if this one doesn’t work out.” I understand that it is really, really, really hard to believe that if you’re luckless in love; your natural tendency is to cling to hints of interest from the appropriate gender like a fangirl to an autograph from David Tennant. But I know people who have that mindset who aren’t. It is totally possible.

2) Be honest. As your mom always said, honesty is the best policy. Do not wait around hopefully with giant puppy-dog eyes without actually saying anything. Because of the sheer perversity of the universe, two things will happen:

1) The people who don’t really want to date you will realize that you have a crush on them and not really know what to say, as there is no polite way to say “you have a crush on me but I’m not interested” to a person who won’t spit it out.2) The people who do want to date you will have no idea and you will both be miserably in love when you could be swapping spit and naming your future kids.

It’s okay to be awkward; many people find awkwardness cute. Try not to make a big sit-down-and-have-a-huge-chat deal about it; you can just say casually (when it naturally comes up in conversation) that the person is totally attractive and you’d like to date them. If you want, you can practice on monogamously dating or orientationally incompatible people that you happen to find attractive; some people find that less threatening. The first few times you are honest, it will be terrifying. But every time you say it it’s a little bit less scary, and within the year it’ll be as easy as pie. Uh, assuming you know how to bake pie. I don’t.

3) NO Firthing. Firthing is when you stare at someone you have a crush on very intensely without actually talking to them. Advanced Firthers may stare at someone very intensely when they’re not looking and then look away very quickly when their crush looks around all “I am getting the feeling that someone is staring at me, eh, maybe it’s secret government spies.” Don’t do that shit. There is no circumstance in which Firthing is a valid life choice. (Also, read the linked Captain Awkward article, it is full of helpful geek dating advice.)

4) Look for reciprocation. This is my favorite because you do not have to mess around with body language shit. The basic principle: if you are doing something you cannot reasonably ask about, see if they return the thing you are doing. How do you tell if someone wants to talk to you? They will initiate conversation with you sometimes! How do you tell if someone likes it when you make jokes about how much you want to fuck them? They will respond to your jokes with jokes about how much they want to fuck you! How do you tell if someone appreciates your book recommendations? They will read books you recommend! How do you tell if someone wants to text you? They’ll occasionally begin the texting! You get the idea.

5) Ask before touching. Yes, some people can touch, kiss, or even have sex without ever talking about it. Mostly those people are people who can read signals, and hence are not reading this particular essay. Also, often, their sex lives suck. It is usually best to err on the side of caution. “Do you want a hug?” “I’d like to kiss you now, if you do not mind.” “May I fuck you aaaaall night long?” Once again, you get the idea. Now, of course, once you’re comfortable with where someone’s boundaries are, you might be able to hug or kiss them without asking, but certainly for the first time you should ask.

6) If you violate someone’s boundaries by accident, apologize and never do it again. Boundary violations happen to the best of us– even people who aren’t socially awkward. However, if you get angry when someone asserts their boundaries, the only consequence is that they’re not going to trust you and that people will not assert their boundaries with you in the future, which means you could be making them uncomfortable without even knowing it. No boundaries are silly boundaries: if someone doesn’t want to be hugged or to have their hair touched, respect that shit. There is exactly one proper response to someone telling you “please don’t do that”: it’s “I’m sorry” and not doing that.

7) Realize that you are mostly not the problem. The complete strangers who feel the need to compliment my ass every fucking time I’m in girl-drag? Not socially awkward people making a mistake. The complete stranger who ground on me at prom and made me feel so awful I almost cried? Not a socially awkward person making a mistake. The dude who asked a friend of mine for a blowjob the day her best friend died because “you need to be cheered up”? Not a socially awkward person making a mistake. The unnamed atheist speaker who groped a woman? Not a socially awkward person making a mistake. All of those people know exactly what they’re fucking doing, and part of the enjoyment IS in making people uncomfortable.

The most common failure mode for socially awkward people is not violating boundaries; it’s never saying anything in the first place. (Although that causes problems of its own: see #2.) Therefore, DO NOT fucking assume that every person who violates someone’s boundaries is a socially awkward person making a mistake, because chances are, they’re not. I know that you’re socially awkward, and you’re afraid of making a mistake, and the psychology behind that makes sense to you far more than the psychology of a predator does. But that doesn’t mean that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.

About ozyfrantz

Ozy Frantz is a student at a well-respected Hippie College in the United States. Zie bases most of zir life decisions on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and identifies more closely with Pinkie Pie than is probably necessary. Ozy can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter as @ozyfrantz. Writing is presently Ozy's primary means of support, so to tip the blogger, click here.

And let me guess that Ozzy has always been relatively good-looking and attractive.

I can tell you that the main tip for getting laid is being attractive, and not being unattractive. Something I have learned from the time when I used to weigh 400 pounds and have just a high-school degree. Now that I am 6″5′, weigh 210 pounds and hold a master’s degree, then suddenly I am a supposedly a much better person, since now I am so attractive, despite nothing in my personality having changed.

Ah ok, thanks for the clarification. Makes sense now. When you are in girl-drag, do you pass for female fully or as a male in drag? Don’t have to answer this of course, just curious on how others perceive people and what the effects are.

“The complete strangers who feel the need to compliment my ass every fucking time I’m in girl-drag? Not socially awkward people making a mistake.” -Ozy, 29 May 2012 “I have a nice ass….my ass is damn fine.” – Ozy, 7 Jun 2011 Given this, can you really blame them? Okay, no, seriously, is it one stranger who repeatedly comments upon your ass, or a stream of strangers, each individually commenting upon your ass? That one stranger is an asshole, but what about the others? If it’s the latter, then it seems that we might learn from this that it is… Read more »

“1) Be a genuinely kind, non-entitled person. This is my biggest piece of advi…”…

1) Be a genuinely kind, non-entitled person. This is my biggest piece of advice, and it ought to be really reassuring to a lot of awkward people. If you genuinely are kind and mean well and are interested in other people, most people can tell. All the …

“Nevertheless, the healthy attitude to take to flirting with people of the appropriate gender is “That person seems cool. It’d be awesome if we dated, but it’s also cool if we’re friends, since they’re an awesome person I’d like to hang out with either way. And, hey, there’s probably another awesome person I can date somewhere else if this one doesn’t work out.” Flirting isn’t just done for some people to get a date. If someone is looking for a romantic or sexual relationship, why do they have to become friends with a person who has rejected their advances? Maybe… Read more »

I was actually thinking about going to a skeptic’s conference this summer, but after reading the discussion on the links in the article, I’m not sure I want to. They make it sound like a nest of skeevy horndogs. Is that what I have to look forward to? I was hoping for thought provoking discussions and getting to know interesting people, but not in a Biblical sense. Can anyone enlighten me on this? Fortunately I’m outside the age range where I’ll have tons of guys trying to grope me, probably, but if the conference is just a pickup “scene” I’m… Read more »

I don’t think that atheists are especially skeevy. I think, for a number of historical reasons, atheist conventions are more likely to be disproportionately attended by men, and that given the general culture of misogyny that exists, any place where men outnumber women is likely to have a certain amount of skeeviness. However, don’t let those articles dissuade you. The sudden appearance of this issue in the skeptical community is more indicative of an increase in reporting, and less of a sudden spike in incidents. A lot of atheists and skeptics are committed to increasing the visibility of this issue… Read more »

Just read the story about the postcard. I think I see the problem. I bet for many people, there’s this horrible stereotype that mashes a bunch of things together: skepticism = free thinking = free love = open to swinging = no boundaries = can’t be offended This is unfair to free thinkers and atheists and swingers all at the same time. A skeptic or atheist conference is NOT a polyamory or swinging get-together. Maybe your odds are greater, but that doesn’t make it appropriate to solicit strangers in this fashion. I bet this is a somewhat common issue for… Read more »

Now I’m all curious about the whole “atheist conference” thing. Are atheist gatherings an especially horrible place for sexual harassment for some reason, or did this just happen to come up on an atheist blog? I’m trying to figure out why atheist men might be more aggressive or socially awkward or clueless about women compared to other men, and I seriously doubt they are a special case. (Maybe biased as somewhat of an atheist myself, though I’ve never been to an atheist gathering.) In fact, part of me is wondering if there is an unspoken stereotype about atheist women being… Read more »

I’m not commenting on the article, but on the feed. Since you moved here I cannot read your posts on my feed reader, so it makes it a lot more difficult to read you while on the go. And that’s a pity because I enjoy your blog!

“If she is snuggling with you and pressing up against you, that’s a good time to say “I’d like to kiss you right now!” If she is leaning away from you and looks bored, probably not a good time.” Except that at the “right moment” the asking is superfluous and counterproductive. The whole point of the asking is to not have to worry about the right moment. If she is pressing up against me, snuggling and looking into my eyes with usually a look of expectation and uncertainty then that is precisely the right moment to kiss her. But actually… Read more »

I think it really depends on how you ask. You can ask in a way that is sexy and flirtatious. You also have to be at the right moment. If she is snuggling with you and pressing up against you, that’s a good time to say “I’d like to kiss you right now!” If she is leaning away from you and looks bored, probably not a good time.

“Ask before touching. ” Asking to kiss a girl is generally a bad idea. I have tried it multiple times. The responses range from silence, rejection or avoidance. But in every case I found out later that the girl did actually want to kiss me, she just didn’t want to be asked about it. She expected me to just kiss her if I wanted to instead of asking. NO GIRL has ever thought that asking for a kiss was normal. I have had girls tell me: 1) If you want to kiss me then just do it. Don’t ask 2)… Read more »

I see where you’re coming from there. I agree that verbally asking for a kiss, or holding hands, is probably a bit weird. But, and this is important, you do need to ask. You just do it with body language. You lean in, you look them in the eye, you get close, you check that they’re not pulling away (preferably they lean in right back) and THEN you kiss them.

I verbally asked to kiss my now girlfriend of two months before kissing her for the first time. In retrospect I probably didn’t need to as she had dropped an awful lot of hints (mentioning her sister said I should kiss her etc.) but I needed to in order to feel comfortable. She’s really quiet, really parsimonious with words when she does talk, and has pretty non-emotive body language. Was it weird? Eh, sorta, but not nearly as much as I thought it would be beforehand. I’ve since gotten better at reading her and don’t need to ask for the… Read more »

Personally, I find asking *far* less awkward, because I have no idea how to assess body language to tell if someone wants to kiss me; I presume that there are people who can, but I can’t! So this is primarily a tip for people who don’t know HOW to tell when “the moment’s right.” If you do, then you are clearly not the target audience of that point. If you find asking weird, you can also phrase it as “I’d like to kiss you” or “you should kiss me” or “I’ve been thinking about kissing you” or similar. …Also, if… Read more »

Diagnosed autistic here! “If you have a brain reason why you can’t figure out social interaction, I’m not sure how much help I can be. This is merely for the awkward, not the autistic!” Autism isn’t an excuse for bad manners. It just means being (mostly) unable to guess people’s internal state without verbal communication, and the resulting difficulty in figuring out social interaction from watching people interact while missing 90% of the information. Therefore spelling out those basic social rules that we may have missed on, without assuming the ability to read body language, is very helpful. “If you… Read more »

When it… naturally… comes up… sorry you lost me. For the autistic among us, it’s more likely to be in the form of blurting it out in the middle of nowhere. Any examples of what would be a good moment to bring it up? Some examples, or talking around them: when it is related to the topic of conversation at hand. When it is related to whatever it is you’re already doing. When there’s this silence where you’re both looking at each other a little awkwardly and you think, “Hmmm, maybe zie’s attracted to me too and this is one… Read more »

There’s another, slightly different option. Instead of presenting your desire as a question, present it as an I-statement of desire. “I really want to kiss you right now.” Wait for a clearly affirmative response, which could actually take the form of her kissing you. If she turns her face towards you and says “well, what are you waiting for?” that’s a pretty good clue as well.

Thanks for that tip, I myself was wondering how you ask to kiss someone. :S
Puts the ball in their court, though some might look down on you for not just doing it as assman says. Could it be seen as a lack of confidence?

The staring at someone stuff has also made me confused, I’ve looked to women before (to their eyes) and they’ve looked back but I’ve looked away quickly (lack of confidence I guess) but how long is acceptable to look back?

I tend to lean towards a polite imperative clause, something like “Kiss me please”. It’s assertive, unambiguous and easy to decline. Also, if it does not feel like the right thing to utter at some moment it probably isn’t.

Developers^3 and FlyingKal, I can see where you guys are coming from with worrying that this means that you’re genuinely kind and/or don’t genuinely mean well and/or are ‘entitled’. And I can imagine that that would be tough to swallow. But, if you’re really worried about it, then examine yourself closely. See if you think that you are kind, if you think you generally mean well, and if you are ‘entitled’. If you find think you’re not kind, you don’t generally mean well, or you are ‘entitled’, ask if it bothers you. If it bothers you, change it. People do… Read more »

I can only assume you misread something in one of my previous comments, because there isn’t even an implication that ‘being kind, meaning well, or wanting to have a partner’ is wrong in anything I posted. Please reread and quote if you think I’m wrong. You do raise an interesting point though. ‘Wanting to have a partner’ isn’t wrong. It isn’t uncommon. But it is extremely unattractive. No one wants to fill a ‘insert partner here’ slot. If you give someone the impression that that is what they would be doing in your life, you will almost always put them… Read more »

Your reading and comprehensing skills are way too advanced for my writing.
I’ll just add a final comment: If someone is kind and meaning well, how do you tell if that person also is or have feelings of “entitlement” before or when that person asks you on a date?

That’s a very good question. It would have a lot to do with what they asked, when, how and where they asked it, and facial expressions and body language. It would be an overall impression and it’s hard to pin it down. Also, I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t be wrong!

Sorry, final, final comment…
“You do raise an interesting point though. ‘Wanting to have a partner’ isn’t wrong. It isn’t uncommon. But it is extremely unattractive. ”

I’d say that (at least) roughly 95% of the population have a partner on short or long term basis, at least once in life. Are they all being together against their will, or why else are they together if it’s all so unattractive?

When I got with my fiance, I specifically didn’t want ‘a partner’. I wanted to be single. But he was just so awesome that I wanted him anyway. Five and a half years later I’m marrying him next month :). I’m an optimist, so I like to believe that most people in relationships are like that.

The difference is between want ‘a partner’ and wanting ‘you as a partner’.

And here I thought that marriage was just institutionalized oppression of women.

“The difference is between want ‘a partner’ and wanting ‘you as a partner’.”
No, the significant difference is whether that other “you” wants you as a partner back or not.
If s/he doesn’t, they’ll never progress beyond the “a partner”-status…

If you think that, then I suggest you don’t get married. I don’t think that, so I’m gonna go right ahead. (Just in case, I realise what you’re getting at and I realise that you weren’t actually stating that YOU believe or believed that. I really resent the whole ‘someone once said that all people in category x think blah, this person seems to be in category x, therefore they must think blah’. I’m not even sure I know what category you’ve lumped me into there. But I know for sure that I have never thought, nor said, that marriage… Read more »

Problem is, I’m talking about it on a generic or abstract level, and you keep drawing my words to an extreme (like, I’ve never said anything about “desperately” wanting someone, see below). “I’m talking about wanting having an effect on whether or not ‘that other ‘you” wants you back.” Yes, I know that. And I’m talking about how, using your point of view on attraction, that other ‘you’ _not_ wanting you back will in hindsight have an effect on how your attraction to that person is regarded. Person B isn’t always attracted to person A, whatever case A can do… Read more »

OK, so we’ve been moderated here. So I’ll try a new start 🙂 (Also lost a post to the automatic update of the site! Effin’ …!) Basically I agree with you that most partners are together because they want to be with each other. And also that being desperate (or clingy, or needy, etc) most often is unattractive. However, one can be “wanting” something on a lot of levels. At least in my book. It is not by default the same as desperate, clingy, or needy! And I neither meant or implied that so was the case here. (It can… Read more »

You quoted that part out of context. Saoili said this: “You do raise an interesting point though. ‘Wanting to have a partner’ isn’t wrong. It isn’t uncommon. But it is extremely unattractive. No one wants to fill a ‘insert partner here’ slot. If you give someone the impression that that is what they would be doing in your life, you will almost always put them off. People want to be wanted for themselves, not to fill a role.”

In general, I’m tired of people wasting space quoting whole posts just to respond to single sentences. If the answer is in line with the original post, it’s still there for everyone to see. If it’s not, that’s another bag of chips.

So, I quoted the core of the part I was responding to. If you think that the left-out part would in some way significantly alter the purpose, you’re probably projecting something that is neither there nor intended to be.

It isn’t my job to consider what you may be “tired of” when you’re the one that took what was said out of context by, apparently, neglecting to consider the last part. There would be no need for further clarification hadn’t you ignored that.

That’s a good point. I have only been introduced to the ‘entitlement myth’ from a ‘men are told they’re entitled to a hot girlfriend’ point of view. But there is certainly an element of it there for women too. Though I think what’s sold to women is more ‘be good and you’ll get THE RIGHT man’, as opposed to the male version of ‘be good and you’ll get A HOT girl’.

Of course it’s different. The Victorian belief that women don’t have sexual desire is deeply rooted enough that the idea of a “hot guy” isn’t very precent in culture. Usually “right” happens to have those qualities that this narrative says women are looking for since they don’t go after attractiveness, cultured, educated, well of, kind etc. Actually I was implicitly dichonest. While I wanted to point out that the cinderella narrative does exist, I don’t actually personally find it entitled. To me it’s only entitlement once you start to demand that people be your partner or behave like you want… Read more »

“‘Wanting to have a partner’ isn’t wrong. It isn’t uncommon. But it is extremely unattractive. No one wants to fill a ‘insert partner here’ slot. If you give someone the impression that that is what they would be doing in your life, you will almost always put them off.”

This is exactly the reason I think internet dating sites are a kinda misguided concept. At least for anything more than just casual sex.

There’s not a lot of other venues for simply ‘meeting new people’ on the internets if you’re a bit socially awkward in public and don’t talk to strangers. For example, facebook and things are for keeping in touch with people you’ve already met. If dating sites toned down the ‘dating’ aspect and were just for friends, I think they would work out fine.

I had to let my friends run interference at the last HS Mini-Reunion where the the guy who crushed on me in 8th grade was trying to maneuver closer…He was staring at my butt last reunion (with my hubby standing next to me….UUGGGHHH!!)….

In 8th grade, I was very polite and nice about rejecting his advances, but he still was extremely rude afterwards (before that he would follow me everywhere!)… Big #3 FIRTHER!!

I can see myself telling such a story repeatedly too. Not to get attention, but because some behaviors genuinely confuse me. Most of my social anxiety is caused by a combination of stronger-than-usual empathy and flat-out social retardation*, and as a result, behaviors that indicate a lack of empathy confuse the dickens out of me. * I do not mean this in the insulting-to-people-with-actual-MR sense. I am genuinely very slow at learning social cues. Psychologists have suspected me of having Asperger’s but I refuse to be tested for it. If I have it, I don’t want to know.

Actually this all seems to be pretty good advice. For decades it was very difficult for me to even carry on a conversation with an attractive woman. But that passed and I’m pretty comfortable with it now. I flirt and I have conversations and I enjoy the back and forth. But its still the case that about 50% of the women I encounter, for one reason or another, don’t want to make any kind of contact. Their body language, demeanor, focus, etc are all just saying, “Not you. Not now.” The key is to not take it personally. Because, it… Read more »

@Developers^3 If anything, this is quite the opposite of reassuring or me. The way that is worded, it suggests that the converse is also true: That if people can’t can’t tell that you are genuinely kind and mean well, you are are not a genuinely kind, non-entitled person. Although I doubt that Ozy intended it this way, I would view that as yet another example of “you are bad at this aspect of courtship because you are a bad person”. My thoughts, and concerns, too. @Saoili: After all, you can’t have liked them as a person all that much if… Read more »

If someone says ‘no I don’t want to date you, you’re a horrible person and I don’t want to be anywhere near you’ obviously you’re not going to want to be around them. But, for me, that would be because they said ‘you’re a horrible person and I don’t want to be anywhere near you’, not because they said ‘no I don’t want to date you’. Someone not wanting to date you is never, in my opinion, a good reason to avoid them long term. If, in rejecting you, they also reveal reasons you would not want to be near… Read more »

You mean you ask someone out and they say ‘no, I don’t want to date you, you’re not attractive enough, in fact, you’re so unattractive I don’t even want to be near you’? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? If someone said that I would not want to be around them, not because they don’t want to date me, but because they’re clearly an asshole.

The problem, to me, is with people who take ‘no thanks, I don’t want to date you because I’m not attracted to you’ as ‘no, I refuse to date you because I have deemed you unworthy, because you are not attractive enough’. It’s not about worthiness, it’s about them being, or not being attracted to you. If someone isn’t attracted to you, it doesn’t mean that you have done, or are, anything wrong. They’re just not attracted to you.

“Implied” or “inferred”? Is the person saying that they don’t like you at all? Otherwise it seems as though you’re assuming the other person doesn’t want you around if you’re not pretty enough to turn them on. (And if that’s the case, why would you want to be near such a person?)

I really disagree with this. We get to choose who we’re around. If the pain of rejection makes it too difficult to be around a person we shouldn’t have to grit our teeth and bear it in the fear that doing otherwise makes us a bad person.

I agree here: “The complete strangers who feel the need to compliment my ass every fucking time I’m in girl-drag? Not socially awkward people making a mistake.” But not here: “All of those people know exactly what they’re fucking doing, and part of the enjoyment IS in making people uncomfortable.” In some situations it is perfectly acceptable to compliment a stranger on their ass. These people may just not realise they’re not in that situation. I don’t think that they are necessarily trying to make you uncomfortable. And I disagree here: “But that doesn’t mean that everyone deserves the benefit… Read more »

Not necessarily. There are some actions that could legitimately go both ways (like inappropriate ass-complimenting). However, there are some things that are generally only done to deliberately be an asshole/establish dominance. Calling someone a lesbian because she turns down a date with you, groping a total stranger without warning, and demanding someone pleasure YOU because “they need cheering up” are not done out of social anxiety. I should know; I’ve suffered from it for most of my life. In addition, someone else making you uncomfortable is NOT YOUR FAULT, and I think that’s more the aspect that Ozy was trying… Read more »

I completely agree that being uncomfortable is not your fault and that it is the person making you uncomfortable that is in the wrong. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt, the first time. They may be doing it that way because that is the way they have always done it and it has always been done that way around them and they’ve never questioned it and never seen it from the other person’s point of view. If someone is being an asshole to you, tell them, they really, genuinely, might not realise it. The… Read more »

Technically yes, unless you’re doing in to a group of people that talk to each other, in which case they’ll just all learn about your assholish ways and avoid you. Or if you do it to a wide net of people, they’ll post about you on the internet. ^_^ The hipster grifter case was one example.

This is my biggest piece of advice, and it ought to be really reassuring to a lot of awkward people. If you genuinely are kind and mean well and are interested in other people, most people can tell. If anything, this is quite the opposite of reassuring or me. The way that is worded, it suggests that the converse is also true: That if people can’t can’t tell that you are genuinely kind and mean well, you are are not a genuinely kind, non-entitled person. Although I doubt that Ozy intended it this way, I would view that as yet… Read more »

I would say that it’s ok to take time to get to that point, but you should be trying to get to the point where you can be friends with them. After all, you can’t have liked them as a person all that much if the pain of being rejected is greater than the desire to be around them.

Depends on how close you were before the rejection doesn’t it? There’s a good chance that you didn’t like them because you didn’t know them and you asked them out because you wanted to get to know them.

Depends. If you haven’t already met that person, the first date can be sort of a friendly “getting to know you and to decide whether you’re actually date-worthy” thing for both parties.

I dated lots of people I didn’t already know beforehand. If the friendship comes, it tends to segue into romance a lot quicker than if you’d started out as platonic friends before that first date, but the friendly aspect of things usually manifests if the relationship is at all positive.

“I can’t imagine wanting to go out with someone I didn’t know. I can imagine wanting to get to know someone, but I wouldn’t ask them ‘out'”.

In adult life, as opposed to student life, you often encounter people who you might want to get to know, but whom you might not encounter again in the normal course of things. Getting to know such people will require setting aside dedicated time to get to know them, i.e. a ‘date’.

– I’m not a student, haven’t been for *counts* seven years now. I can understand you thinking ‘her life is clearly different to mine, therefore she must have or be something I am not’. I’m not sure how you got from there to ‘student’ though. – I think that wanting to ‘get to know someone’ based just on how they look (unless it’s something they’re expressing on purpose, like a TShirt from your favourite band, or a tatoo with words from your favourite book or something) is pretty shallow, and I really can’t picture myself doing it. – You say… Read more »

I don’t think I assumed YOU were necessarily a student, but a great amount of dating advice(so-called) seems to be aimed at students, and much of that advice seems to assume that everyone has the same opportunities for meeting new people. I didn’t say that adults don’t have people that they see every day, but my experience is that of the people I do see ‘every day’, I (and they) have already gotten to know one another, and we have already established the basis of our interaction. On those occaisions when I do encounter someone new who seems interesting(and that… Read more »

I had a crush on a certain young man for the last two years of high school. I got to know this guy reasonably well for a schoolmate, since we had most of the same classes together and often had lunch at the same table.* I would listen to him talk to other kids the whole damn time, but was too nervous to say anything beyond General Small Talk (“Hi!” and “How are you?” more than “Can you believe that history assignment, man?”), much less “Hey, I kinda like you.” Because I wouldn’t say anything, one of the girls I’d… Read more »

Because I wouldn’t say anything, one of the girls I’d confided in started dating him senior year. Yes, she was being kind of a bitch for deliberately going after a person I’d told her I was interested in, but if I’d actually TALKED TO HIM, I would at least have known if he wanted to get to know me in other ways or not.

Wait, why was she a bitch? Because you called “dibs” on him more than a year earlier, all of your friends are supposed to avoid dating him even if they like him too and he reciprocates?

I don’t think it’s mean at all. You can’t call dibs on someone for a year and expect all of your friends will stay away. That’s not being a friend, that’s being a selfish toddler. Men aren’t baubles to be put on layaway – they have feelings and desires of their own, just as your friends do.

This is my greatest worry. I am (or I like to think I am) genuinely benevolent, but I am not kind. Kindness implies empathy, and that is something I do not have, at least not as much as I see it in others. My benevolence is very selfish, I want to feel good about myself.

If you’re interested in learning about practicing empathy as both a way to communicate effectively and to be more self-aware, check out non-violent communication (also known as Collaborative Communication or Empathetic Communication). You can learn more about it on your own by reading some of the many books about it–I recommend Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life and Thomas D’Ansembourg’s Being Genuine. Or you can attend a workshop or training or practice group–The Center for NVC has an international calendar of trainings (http://www.cnvc.org/trainingcal) or you can google NVC in your area. We are constantly taught to substitute other… Read more »